Antonino Zichichi

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Antonino Zichichi

Antonino Zichichi [antoˈniːno dziˈkiːki] , called Nino, (born October 15, 1929 in Trapani , Sicily ) is an Italian physicist and non-party politician who worked in nuclear and elementary particle physics . He is known as the founder of the "Centro di Cultura Scientifica Ettore Majorana" science center in Erice , Sicily (1963).

Zichichi worked at many well-known accelerator laboratories such as Fermilab near Chicago or at CERN near Geneva . He was a professor of physics at the University of Bologna , which made him emeritus in 2006 . In 1963 he founded the summer schools for theoretical physics in Erice on Sicily, which enjoyed a very good international reputation. From 1977 to 1982 he was President of the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics ( Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare ) and during the same period he vigorously supported the construction of the underground neutrino laboratory in Gran Sasso . Zichichi almost became director of CERN, but the pressure exerted by the Italian government led to a backlash, so that Herwig Schopper was elected instead in 1981, which led to diplomatic resentment in Italy, which threatened to suspend funding.

He is best known to the Italian public as a science popularizer through many books, newspaper articles and appearances on television. As a staunch Catholic, he firmly takes the position that faith and science are compatible with one another. In this context, for example, his biography of Galileo "Galilei, Divin Uomo" has been criticized, which tries to portray Galileo as a deeply religious person who, for this reason, has revoked his theses. There was also public controversy in the 1990s, for example with the mathematician Piergiorgio Odifreddi , which also led to legal proceedings (Odifreddi also published a book of criticisms of Zichichi in 2003 with the title "Zichicche", a play on words in Italian).

He is president of the "World Federation of Scientists", which he co-founded, and is considered a "skeptic" of global warming .

In November 2012, Zichichi was appointed by Rosario Crocetta to the regional government of Sicily as the department head for cultural goods and Sicilian identity.

In 1976 he received the Premio Mondello , in 2001 the first Premio Enrico Fermi and in 2007 the Bruno Pontecorvo Prize . Since 1993 he has been a full member of the Academia Europaea .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. http://www.unibo.it/it/ateneo/chi-siamo/professori-emeriti/repertorio-dei-professori-emeriti
  2. ^ History - About the Organization ( Memento of August 7, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ^ La Repubblica, November 23, 2012 , in Italian, accessed November 27, 2012
  4. Albo doro dei vincitori
  5. ↑ Directory of members: Antonio Zichichi. Academia Europaea, accessed August 16, 2017 .